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On March 24, prime minister Narendra Modi announced a complete lockdown of the country for 21 days to contain the spread of novel coronavirus. All transport operations were grounded and non-essential services shut overnight. This sudden nationwide lockdown brought the nation of over a billion people to its knees but one particular group has clearly been most severely hit: Indias internal migrants.

Soon after the announcement, distressing reports emerged that many migrants were stranded in cities without income and food.

Many started to head home on foot, with some arduously walking hundreds of kilometres to return to their native places without adequate food and water along the way; some even faced police brutalities for no fault of their own.

The panic surrounding the spread of the coronavirus had already set in before the nationwide lockdown. States such as Maharashtra and Kerala, which are worst affected by the virus and also attract a large number of migrants, had already implemented strict lockdown measures. As livelihoods dwindled, migrants crowded trains to return home.

There are nearly 100 million internal migrants in India, and not all had the choice to return home.

Most rural-urban migrants work in the unorganised sector; they have precarious lives and livelihoods, and they subsist in cities and support their families in villages from savings their meagre everyday earnings allow.

Also read: As Migrants Trudge Out of Indias Cities, the Stark Realities of Migration Stand Exposed

Many had the information but chose to stay for another day of wage as they faced the cruel choice of dying from hunger before coronavirus could get them.

As news spread on the plight of stranded migrants, the Central government and several state governments have initiated actions to provide them with basic necessities such as food, shelter, sanitation. Many civil society groups, such as Aajeevika, are also working on the ground to help the migrants in crisis. These are welcome steps indeed.

Yet, there is also another group of citizens in potentially more severe crisis that needs urgent help but is conspicuously absent in current discussions on lockdown-induced migration crisis.

A family of a migrant worker sits along a highway as they wait for a bus to return to their village, during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to limit the spreading of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ghaziabad, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, March 29, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi

It is the left-behind wives of migrants, who stay behind in villages and who depend on their husbands remittances to run their families. My field research in high labour outmigration state of Bihar shows the important role migrants remittances play in sustaining rural families headed by women.

These are de facto women-headed households where women assume the role of household heads in the absence of men. With their men stranded and livelihoods disrupted, these women need support in these troubling times as much migrants.

Bihar is not alone and this crisis looms large across rural India. In large parts of rural India, labour migration is predominantly undertaken by single men while the women stay behind to manage their families and farms.

As important research by Chinmay Tumbe of IIM-Ahmedabad shows, male migration is prevalent in regions covering over 200 million people, including places as diverse as coastal Maharashtra to mountainous Uttarakhand. Strikingly, this migration pattern has persisted for over 100 years.

There are two key reasons for this male-only pattern of migration. First, socio-cultural norms restrict the mobility of women to distant urban areas. As dutiful wives, mothers, daughter-in-laws, they are expected to stay in the village and manage their rural households.

Also read: 22 Migrant Workers, Kin Have Died Trying to Return Home Since the Lockdown Started

Second, where social norms allow migrants to bring their wives to cities, financial constraints preclude realistic opportunities. Most migrants in urban informal sector earn low wages and share cheap accommodation with fellow workers; they cannot afford to have separate accommodation to live with families. Besides, high costs of healthcare and childrens education in cities also prohibit family migration, especially among communities where women face cultural restrictions on wage work.

Enduring prolonged physical and emotional separation from their men, women also suffer from several gender-based vulnerabilities in villages.

My primary research in rural Bihar on migration and food security documented that women-headed households where men were absent due to migration were more vulnerable to food insecurity than the households headed by men.

This is despite the fact that women prioritised food and used household cash and other resources on food security more judiciously than men. This disadvantage arose largely because of the entrenched gender inequalities women-headed households faced.

One important reason for this is that women often face greater difficulties in accessing government-run social protection services such as PDS food rations, important source of food security in rural India. My field research shows that migration and gender coalesce to produce disadvantage for women-headed migrant households.

This occurs through two ways.

First, absence of men and social norms often restricting the participation of women in the affairs outside the household result in women who stay behind finding it hard to register their claims over their social protection entitlements; those who try are often unheard and manipulated.

Second, the local authorities in-charge of administering the safety nets often regard households with migrant members as having steady income streams, and thus, consider them ineligible for social protection benefits.

It is under such circumstances of added gender-based vulnerabilities that remittances come to their rescue. However, with migration-based livelihoods in disarray for uncertain time, women-headed households will be particularly pressed to fend for themselves.

Also read: Coronavirus Has Revealed Just How Much Our Cities Exclude the Poor

At the global level, there are concerns that COVID-19 poses intensified risks for women and girls, including gender-based violence. The women who stay back in rural India already straddle an added burden of productive and reproductive responsibilities. This crisis will likely intensify their care work, and financial stress will further aggravate their situation.

At the time of writing, media reports showed that states such as Odisha, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh are arranging transport for stranded migrants to return home. But given the risk of coronavirus spread, it is likely that these migrants will be kept in temporary shelters before they are allowed to return home.

Some states, such as Gujarat, have already put in place strict restrictions on migrants return travel to their villages, and arranged free food and accommodation. This is a wise move, not least because it will reduce the risk of women getting infected. But all this also means it will be a while before women in villages can expect help from their men. They need social protection to help them avert this crisis.

Rise in food insecurity is a key immediate concern. One immediate measure that state governments can and should take is to provide free food rations to all such women-headed households to prevent hunger among them. In particular, poor states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh that have high labour outmigration prevalence, much of which involves male migration, should immediately implement this. Vast PDS infrastructure already exists to serve this goal.

Local gram panchayat leaders should be roped in. These leaders possess knowledge on livelihood profiles of all households in their areas and know the migrant households headed by women. Moreover, state governments should also provide cash payments to such households. Many of these households will likely have NREGS job cards and that information should be used to provide them cash support. These steps can provide immediate relief and reduce the gender-based vulnerabilities of such women-headed migrant households.

Indian cities and towns generate over 70% of countrys GDP, and migrant labour plays a key constructive role in this. Indias rural migrants build our cities and sustain our urban lives. We must protect them.

But it is the women left-behind who sustain migration by supporting their men. We must not ignore them, and help them in this time of crisis. We owe it to them.

Chetan Choithani is a postdoctoral research associate at the Urban Studies Institute, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta.

Read this article:
What Happens to the Wives of Male Migrant Workers, Who Run Entire Households in Villages? - The Wire

4 min read01 April

The Government was warned about what would happen when we faced a pandemic the current crisis facing our NHS is the result of decades of putting profit before people.

The Governments response to the current coronavirus crisis has been woeful. But it is also a thorough indictment of the ideology that it adheres to and which has dominated British politics for more than 40 years. A coherent and determined alternative to that ideology has never been more needed.

At the time of writing we remain on the Italy trajectory for cases and deaths. Italy has already surpassed the total number of deaths recorded in China, despite having a population less than one-twentieth of the size. We are already far worse than China, adjusted for population size, in terms of both recorded cases and deaths.

Under this Government and its predecessors, the NHS has gone from permanent winter to structural weakness in a time of crisis. It is the lack of staff, the lack of protective equipment for them, the shortage of beds and the inadequacy of ventilators has made a crisis situation a catastrophe.

The argument that no-one could have foreseen this is patently false. Scientists and epidemiologists have been talking about the next pandemic for years. In 2015 the government produced its strategic defence and security review, where the threat of pandemics was mentioned, but little done. If reports are accurate, Exercise Cygnus in 2016 showed the NHS failing a pandemic simulation exercise, and yet nothing was done to correct that.

It is not broadband communism to suggest that almost everyone now needs free, fast broadband access as a basic necessity

There will need to be a reckoning when this crisis finally passes. It must first include a complete change of the way public services are regarded, and funded, as well as the esteem, pay and conditions of those public sector workers.

It turns out that routinely-disrespected low-skilled workers are among the most important workers in our society. They make things work. We dont actually need hedge fund managers at all.

Of course, this includes migrant workers, who are a key component of our NHS, of public services in general and the whole economy. They are not a burden, we rely on them.

We also see that properly resourced public services are vital, not just the NHS, and social care, but everything from transport, to infrastructure to education. It is not broadband communism to suggest that almost everyone now needs free, fast broadband access as a basic necessity to stay connected and inter-connected.

Some commentators suggest that Boris Johnson understands all this and will act on it, and that there is such a thing as society is a moment of Damascene conversion. This is wilfully nave. The Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that austerity will be with us for a very long time to come.

In reality, a comprehensive and radical alternative will be even more urgently required once the immediate public health crisis is resolved. The damage to peoples lives, to the economy and to public services will endure much longer. Many in government will argue that the spending for the coronavirus (and subsequently the impact of a no deal Brexit) are one-offs, and that they require a renewed belt-tightening to pay for them.

Corbynism rejects this approach. Not least because the legacy of this crisis has not only revealed the damage already suffered by public services, housing, transport and so on, but it will also provide the backdrop to the continuing climate crisis.

Viewed in this light, there is no basis for business as usual politics. We are not going to return to sunlit uplands without vigorous state intervention across society and the economy. A renewed, reinvigorated version of Corbynism will be required, which puts people before profits is required. Sleep-walking from one crisis to the next cannot be an option.

Diane Abbott is Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and shadow home secretary.

The rest is here:
From migrant workers to free broadband, coronavirus has shown that Corbynism is needed - PoliticsHome.com

Our newsfeeds are flooded with videos and articles about migrant workers walking over a 100 km a day to reach their respective hometowns. The suspension of trains and buses and the sealing of State borders has left several thousands stranded across the country. Which industries do these labourers mainly service?

Real estate is the third largest sector after agriculture and manufacturing to use migrant labour. Says Prashant Thakur, Director & Head Research, Anarock Property Consultants: Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu account for more than half of the countrys total construction employment. As per the National Skill Development Council, the workforce employed by the construction and real estate sector is expected to grow to 76 million by 2022.

In the light of the lockdown, it is time to ask what industry bodies and developers are doing for their workers. Due to the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 crisis, developers have been caught off guard and are unprepared to deal with the situation. However, many branded developers and major players are stepping forward with plans and policies to deal with this unforeseen situation, says Thakur.

Keeping a check

Niranjan Hiranandani, National President of the National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO), says, All industry bodies have communicated to their members the seriousness of the pandemics challenges and promised to assist migrant labourers as they are the most vulnerable. But, in the given scenario, he adds, we need to factor in that workers opting to move away from the sites to return to their villages is adding to the issue.

Arun Mn, Founder and Managing Director, Casagrand, explains that on-site accommodation and a daily food allowance is being provided to all the migrant labourers he employs. Basic sanitation facilities and wash areas have also been provided. We have arranged isolation rooms in each camp in case a need arises, he says. Migrant workers make up 80% of his total worker strength of 4,700. 50% of these workers are from Bihar, followed by Odisha (18%), West Bengal (15%), Uttar Pradesh (8%), Madhya Pradesh (6%), Jharkhand (2%) and Andhra Pradesh (1%).

Official guidelines (BOCW Act and Govt.)

Official directives

On March 23, the Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health sent out a circular instructing employers of Building and Other Construction Works (BOCW) establishments to comply with the provisions of the BOCW Act 1996 and the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Condition of Service) Act of 1979. The Act states that food, medical care and suitable accommodation, with separate space for cooking, bathing, washing and lavatory facilities are to be provided on-site or at a designated space nearby.

It also states that when more than 250 workers are employed and when more than 100 inter-State migrant workers are employed, canteen facilities must be provided. The rules also say that the contractor must ensure suitable and adequate medical facilities and preventive measures against epidemics and virus infections: The entire cost on treatment, hospital charges and the travel expenses from hospital to resident shall be borne by the contractor.

According to S. Sridharan, chairman of the Tamil Nadu chapter, the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India (CREDAI) has sent directives to its builder members. They are required to provide workers with food and other essentials. This is a tough time for the industry, and we have seen to it that all members are complying with the directives. Food and provisions are being supplied to labourers on-site and to those in camps. We have also intervened with contractors to ensure the supplies reach them, he says.

Cess funds

The Cess Act requires the construction industry to pay 1% of the total cost of their project towards the welfare of the labourers.

It is difficult to say how many have followed this directive but, on the ground, several developers are trying to do their bit, says Thakur of Anarock. Builders across cities are providing grains, pulses, vegetables, drinking water and milk. In many cases, building sites and camps housing workers are being fumigated and sanitised.

On-ground

According to Chitty Babu, Chairman and CEO of Akshaya, the 679 workers he employs have been sent to 10 labour colonies in Chennai and one in Trichy. We have been sensitising them on the issue and taking precautionary measures on-site as well. Accommodation, food, access to toilets and drinking water is being provided. We have ambulance and medical facilities as well.

Other builders say they are taking similar measures. If that is the case, what explains the mass exodus of labourers across States? The lapses have happened in a few parts of the country and need to be dealt with severely, said one industry source.

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What is the real estate industry doing to help their migrant labour workforce? - The Hindu

As the coronavirus crisis spreads, migrants attempting to enter Europe are in a vulnerable position with little or no help.

Just under a week ago, 56 people arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos.

The country is on lockdown but the migrants complain they've been given no protection.

"They said because of coronavirus you will be here 14 days," said this migrant from Afghanistan. "We are here 56 people, six African and all of us Afghans. They didn't give us gloves. They didn't give us any masks. "

The UN office on Lesbos described the camp living conditions as inhumane.

Last month neighbouring Turkey said it would no longer stop migrants from heading towards Greece.

The result is a border crisis between the two historic rivals. Greek authorities have said no migrants who arrived after March 1 will be able to apply for asylum. Instead, they will be detained pending deportation.

Camps on Lesbos and other islands of the eastern Aegean are already overcrowded and operating above their capacity.

The island's officials have complained there is no more room for new arrivals.

See the article here:
Migrants arriving in Greece say they have no protection against coronavirus - Euronews

A charity volunteer has launched a major clothing appeal to help provide dignity to women affected by the migrant crisis across Europe.

Jan Bettley, from Great Maplestead, is encouraging people to donate new pairs of underwear for female migrants who have sought refuge on islands across Greece.

While helping a team of volunteers to unload vital supplies on one of the Greek islands last year, Mrs Bettley was surprised to discover a drastic shortage of underwear for women, which prompted her to appeal for donations.

I believe women deserve the dignity of wearing their own underwear, said the 69-year-old.

Following her appeal, Mrs Bettley received hundreds of donations from her local Womens Institute group.

I was so proud of them and their friends who donated items, she said.

In November, 500 pairs of underwear were sent to a migrant camp, with the same amount of donations being delivered to Samos in February.

Keen to support migrants, Mrs Bettley, of Church Street, joined Hope and Aid Direct, as a volunteer.

Its a humanitarian disaster, and I thought, what can I do to help?, she said.

Run by volunteers, the charity provides vital supplies to vulnerable individuals and families across the world.

Despite their hardship, Mrs Bettley described the migrants resilience as awe-inspiring.

These women are so stoic they are just amazing, she said. They are living in total squalor and they are doing it with dignity.

Highlighting that it was considered a basic human right to own everyday essentials such as underwear, Mrs Bettley said the donations were always appreciated.

They deserve dignity and I feel that very strongly, she said.

To donate items, call 07901 711394, or email jan@janhancock.co.uk.

Businesses are also being sought to serve as drop-off points for donations.

See the rest here:
Charity volunteer launches clothing appeal in support of women impacted by migrant crisis - Suffolk Free Press